Cornell University NLR Rings

Introduction

NLR experimental setup --- private lambda networks. Cornell has created a new experimental testbed, the Cornell NLR Rings, to explore the properties of wide-area optical networks under real use conditions, focusing on a new situation in which the network user has semi-dedicated access to an uncongested 10Gbit "lambda". As seen in the graph, the Cornell NLR Loops consists of a set of four variable-length optical network paths that start and end at Cornell and permit transmission of data on various cross-country trips. Our large ring is highlighted in yellow and spans nearly 8000 miles. Even in an uncongested optical network, packets can be lost, inter-packet spacing disrupted, and other issues arise. Only by understanding these issues can we develop accurate network models and new protocols to overcome problems, and we need the testbed to demonstrate these solutions in ways that will give operators such as major banks the confidence to experiment with them. Our early work has already made it clear that uncongested lambda networks are very different from the congested and chaotic public Internet, and that standard Internet protocols will likely not provide acceptable performance in these settings. This is very recent work and, to date, we have only published four papers on the topic, at Ton and DSN in 2010, FAST in 2009, and NSDI in 2008. But the Cornell NLR Rings will be a rich experimental resource for us, and the research community, in 2010 and beyond.

NLR Rings Topology

Small and Large paths, seen as traffic usage

Publications

Tudor Marian, Daniel A. Freedman, Ken Birman, Hakim Weatherspoon. Empirical Characterization of Uncongested Lambda Networks and 10GbE Commodity Endpoints. Appears in Proceedings of 40th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2010). June 2010, Chicago, IL.
Mahesh Balakrishnan, Tudor Marian, Ken Birman, Hakim Weatherspoon, Lakshmi Ganesh. Maelstrom: Transparent Error Correction for Communication between Data Centers. To appear in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN). 2010.
Hakim Weatherspoon, Lakshmi Ganesh, Tudor Marian, Mahesh Balakrishnan, and Ken Birman. Smoke and Mirrors: Reflecting Files at a Geographically Remote Location Without Loss of Performance. In Proceedings of the 7th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST 2009). February 2009, San Francisco, CA.
Mahesh Balakrishnan, Tudor Marian, Ken Birman, Hakim Weatherspoon, and Einar Vollset. Maelstrom: Transparent Error Correction for Lambda Networks. Fifth Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation (NSDI 2008). April 2008, San Francisco, CA.

People

Faculty

Graduate Students and Researchers

Alumni

Mahesh Balakrishnan